Faded Sun
by semtester
Summary: Julia and Gren talk about the man who haunts them.


**Disclaimer:** All characters appearing in _Cowboy Bebop_ are the copyright of Sunrise, Inc. No infringement of these copyrights is intended, and the following story is not authorized by the copyright holder. In other words, I don't own CB nor do I own Soundgarden's _Fell On Black Days_, but it is also used without permission. If Sunrise/Bandai or the members of Soundgarden happen across this fic, please consider it free publicity.

* * *

Faded Sun

Whatsoever I've feared has come to life  
Whatsoever I've fought off became my life  
Just when everyday seemed to greet me with a smile  
Sunspots have faded and now I'm doing time  
Cause I fell on black days

_"Fell on Black Days"_  
Soundgarden from _Superunknown_

* * *

The woman was a dream that drifted in one night to take refuge from the dreary cold. 

Like a ghost with nothing but a ritual to give her empty warmth, she would sit at the same spot in the same club and drink the same drink. Her clothes never changed. Dark brown pants and sweater with a heavy overcoat. Her smile was small and sad, her voice low and soft. 

They knew she would not stay, but it didn't matter. For as long as she was with them, she was like the sun visiting to keep away the black days.

* * *

In the real estate brochures for Callisto, with its glossy pictures of wintery landscapes and hazy panorama shots of the city, the writers liked to slip in a small but significiant piece of trivia to highlight the upside to living on Callisto: the lack of rats. 

The unpublished but well quoted punchline to those nifty brochures was that not even rats would want to live on Callisto. 

This dark joke was not lost on the ragged and jagged population. 

Besides being considered dumber than rats by most of the galaxy, the men who lived on this forsaken moon of Jupiter were either on the run from the law or if they were not on the run from the law then they could not recall their exact reasons for being on Callisto or if they did recall their lapse in reason, then they were too broke to leave as jobs were scarce and if someone had a job, a paycheck was even scarcer but a person stayed on the job anyway because a job with a now and again paycheck was better than no job at all. 

But whatever the circumstances were that kept a man on Callisto, the common goal was to try and forget them. The less said, the better it was for all because no one wanted to know anyway. 

The dogs, who would bark throughout the interminable days, had more detailed conversations with each other than the average human resident had with another human resident and that was just fine to both man and dog. After all, what was there to say in the weak light of a faded sun that could not hide the wreck of half-finished buildings, abandoned cars lining the streets or the constant stench of burning tar that was used to repair the battered apartment buildings? 

Yet, for all the bleakness of the gray sky above and the biting dirty frost that covered the ground that made Callisto a prison without bars, she found something close to solace. Although the population was nearly 100 percent male, no one bothered her or asked her questions. They left her alone to drift through the junkyard streets of Blue Crow like a golden wraith. They would stare at her, some in curiosity, some in hunger, but they did not approach her. 

If her days were spent wandering the streets thinking about nothing or sitting in her hotel room thinking about too much, her evenings were spent at a rundown club called Rester House. Whether she went there out of a need to be around people for companionship or the need to be around people because she had never liked to drink alone, she could not say for sure although she was damned sure that she didn't really care. 

Like the mysterious femme fatale that she had once been tagged for being, she would wait until the lights darkened and then she would slip in just as the band began their second set of the night. A creature of habit, she sat in the same place every night. Second bar stool from left. As she draped her heavy overcoat on the seat next to her, she would order scotch on the rocks. The bartender would smile but say nothing as he made her drink and then he would place it on a well used coaster. When she would make a move to pay for the drink, he would wave her off and say, "It is on the house." She would not argue with him but as she tipped her drink to him in salute to his generosity, she would make a mental note to drop a good tip before leaving for the night. 

After nearly two weeks of this ritual, she was considered a regular. She was good for business, the saxophone player had told her after the end of her first week. "Word's gotten around of a beautiful woman who comes into the Rester," he had said, his eyes scanning the club. 

She had made a cursory glance at her surroundings and noted that tables were all filled. She didn't think it was due to her presence, female or not. "Maybe it is you that they've come to hear," she'd countered with a teasing smile. "You're good. Besides, you're pretty beautiful yourself. You make me look like a man in comparison." She had been joking but only barely. The fact of the matter was that he was remarkably lovely with luscious dark locks and sparkling blue eyes that were framed by long thick lashes that rich women killed minks for. 

At her observation, he'd laughed lightly, enigmatically, sadly and then he'd asked her if there was anything she wanted to hear. 

"You wouldn't know it," she'd replied blandly, swishing the slowly melting ice around her glass. 

"Probably not," he'd agreed. "But give me a little hum of something. I'm pretty good at figuring out the notes even from humming." She'd hesitated, embarrassed, but the man insisted and so she had hummed a tune that she'd made up on a rainy night when she had started to believe in dreams again. 

When she had finished, the saxophone man had told her, "That's beautiful." Then he'd given her a wink and a smile that was nothing short of angelic before he had gone back to the stage. Without his band as backup, he had begun to play. True to his word, he had played the tune perfect and as he played, her heart broke all over again. 

Since that night, she had asked for him to play the tune and every night he played it just for her and every night she would be reminded that dreams did not come true. That's why they were dreams. 

_"I'm just watching a dream that I never wake up from..."_

_It is because the dream was their life_, she thought, her delicate and deadly hand curving tightly around the moisture slickened glass. _And her life was an inescapable lie._

_Women are all liars_, she'd told him once. He hadn't believed her. She wondered if he did now. 

Lost in her morose reverie, she did not hear the music fade nor the approach of footsteps. "Why the sad smile?" the saxophone man asked, concerned. His unexpected presence at her side made her jump. "I'm sorry," he apologized, his expression genuine. "I didn't mean to scare you." 

She chuckled soundlessly at how badly her senses had rotted since she'd started her wandering. "I'm slipping," she accused lightly of herself and reached over to the pocket of her dark coat for her pack of cigarettes. 

"What do you mean?" he inquired, curious, as he leaned against the bar. 

After a lingering first pull of the freshly lit cigarette followed by a slow release of smoke, she offered a slight grin and said, "You don't really want to know." He shrugged and waited patiently for her to continue. She smirked and explained vaguely, "It is a long story." 

He shrugged again. He lifted his case to the bar and began to take apart his saxophone. "That was our last set and it is almost last call. I think I've got time for a long story." 

Looking around the club, she could see that most of the customers had begun to leave. Tables had emptied and the chairs were flipped over and placed on the table tops. With a tired sigh, she took a sip from her glass and hoped that he would catch the hint. Over the rim, she saw him give her a lop-sided smile that demanded nothing and everything at the same time and she knew she would give in. 

_He really is beautiful_, she admitted silently and with faint dread added, _He's also unnaturally charming_. As beautiful as he was, it was his deep and consoling voice that made women and men want and need to give in. She put her glass down and took another drag of the cigarette to steady herself. "I was in the syndicate," she told him, her tone flat. 

_Was?_ she thought in brittle self-derision. _Is it ever really past tense?_

The man's hands paused over the saxophone case. "I find that hard to believe," he said, his smile lingering on his lips. "You don't seem the type." 

"I find it hard to believe that you were once a soldier," she countered dryly and let her eyes drift and linger on his tapered musician hands. "You don't seem the type." 

He laughed as he snapped the saxophone case shut. "Touche...uh... What is your name anyway?" 

"Julia," she answered without hesitation and wondered where her protective instincts had gone to give up the information so easily. Before she could ask him for his name, she heard him laugh again but this time there was almost a bitter sound to it. 

"Julia, huh?" 

Taken aback, she inquired, "Is there something wrong with the name? You look like you swallowed a piece of unripened grapefruit when you say it." 

"Nothing wrong with the name," he replied, his mouth twisting in a melancholy smile. "Just the memory." 

She shivered as she flicked some bills on the bar. "Maybe there is something wrong with the name after all," she conceded, feeling sad and worn as she stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette in the crystal ashtray. With a fluid motion, she slid off the stool and into the overcoat that hid everything except her long hair. Not ready to continue the conversation, she said, "I'll see ya tomorrow...uh... What is your name?" 

He put on his chocolate brown coat and pulled his saxophone case from the bar. "Gren," he offered, his expression thoughtful as he watched her. 

It was addicting, she acknowledged, to be watched by him and she shook her head at her foolishness. "Goodnight, Gren." 

"Goodnight, Julia."

* * *

The next evening, she slipped in at the same time. She took up her stool at the bar and ordered the same drink. As usual, the bartender waved off her attempt to pay and as usual, she thought of the tip that she would leave. The only thing different from the night before was the song that Gren and his band began to play. He hadn't played this song before. At least, he had not played it since she had come to Callisto. 

The notes floated over her like a familiar haunting and she felt an unseen hand reach into her chest and begin to squeeze as if to force the bile from her stomach up into her throat to burn away her ability to breathe. She swung around to face Gren. She knew her face was constricted and she fought to regain control. Yet, it was no use. The more he played, the more pain she felt. 

Silently, she begged him, _Please stop._

Even if she had said the words aloud, he would not have heard her. His eyes were closed, his lovely face soft as if in a trance, and she could see that the music possessed him just as it had once possessed her. He would not, could not, halt the flow of this haunting, musical dream until it was time to wake. So she waited until the last velvet note was released. 

Silence greeted the end of Gren's solo. The audience, rough and coarse, did not know what to make of such sublime beauty and it showed in the applause that was slow in coming. 

The confused response caused Gren to laugh. "That tune was called Julia," he explained to his dumbfounded audience. "A little different from the usual, but we all need a little golden sunshine in our dark days, even here on Callisto." The men nodded in belated agreement. His eyes moved to her. Taking in her stricken expression, his brows drew together in concern. Smoothly, he announced to the crowd, "Since all of you have been so nice in allowing me to play a new song and not falling asleep, I'll give you a break by letting the band take over." 

"What?" his bassist whispered loud enough for Julia to hear. "Gren? What are you doing? We still have three more songs." 

He shook his head. "Jess, look at them," he whispered back. "They're sitting there like they don't know what to do." 

"Are you kidding? They were ready to cry," Jess told him. "It was great." Gren said nothing and turned to look at Julia. Jess followed his band leader's line of vision and he sighed in defeat. "Get out of here," he told Gren. "We'll finish up." 

There was some mild grumbling in the audience as Gren packed up, but when Jess and the band started in on an old rock tune called Mustang Sally, Gren was forgotten to everyone but Julia. 

"You didn't need to stop," she said shortly, her breath shallow. 

He put his sax case down and picked up her coat to take the stool next to her. "I wanted to. You wanted me to." She didn't contradict him and that was acknowledgement enough. "So what's wrong?" 

She didn't bother with evasiveness. "How do you know that song?" 

"From one of my Titan comrades." 

"Who?" she asked with a distinct snap to her low voice. 

Gren paused, her wide eyes narrowing on her. "Why?" 

"Just tell me." 

"Vikesha Sariel," he answered. "He went by the name of--" 

"Vicious," she finished. The dark blue eyes widened briefly as he nodded. She felt nauseous and claustrophobic. "I have to get out of here." She grabbed her coat out of his hands and hastily pulled it on. She was starting to pull out some money to put on the bar when she felt Gren's hand over her wrist. 

"How do you know Vicious?" he asked, his voice, usually so gentle and earnest, sounded as if it was in pain. 

She couldn't look at him as she answered, "He was my lover and my torturer." 

The fingers tightened around her wrist. "He was my savior and my betrayer." 

And just that suddenly, she felt no need to flee. She put her hand over the one he had around her wrist and faced him. "I think we need to talk." 

"Yes," he agreed and together they left in Blue Crow's night.

* * *

They went to his place and Julia noted that they were better for it. Her place was a hotel room that was not so much seedy as it was falling apart with cracks in the walls and paint chips that fell whenever the door opened or closed. 

In contrast, Gren's one bedroom with luxury with its warm brown tones, wood paneling and sofa and two captain chairs. On the walls, pictures of his life were displayed. She lingered over one picture that had a laughing woman with black hair and brown eyes carrying a toddler with the same dark hair but twinkling blue eyes. "Is this your mother?" she questioned. 

He sat on the sofa and poured a drink for her and then for himself. "Yes. As you can see, I was a mama's boy," he said with gleam of unrepentance. 

"Lucky you," she murmured. Her eyes scanned the other photos until it fell on one with a turbaned Gren. "Is this you on Titan?" she inquired and turned to him to see his expression. 

His hand tightened around the long stemmed glass. "Yes." 

She'd expected that his face would bear pain at the thought of war, but there was none to be found. In fact, he appeared nostalgic. "You're an odd one, Gren," she speculated lightly. 

"Why is that?" 

"You seem like you would be a flag waving peace protestor and yet here you keep your pictures of war like most people keep their high school yearbooks." 

"There is no camaraderie like that between soldiers," he replied. "When your survival depends on your comrades, the bond is sacred." 

"Sacred bonds, huh?" She thought about it and decided there was some truth to that. There were many times when her survival had depended on the efficiency of her team. One slip and it was all over. One misstep and it was all over. That was war was like and she had seen her own kind of war. 

"Romantic words," he admitted ruefully and took a sip of his drink. 

Julia laughed lightly in agreement and returned her attention back to the picture. Gren looked tired but happy in his military uniform as he sat in the trench that he and his comrades had used for protection. In the background, there sat one of his fellow soldiers in profile. She leaned in to get a better look and her breath suspended. "This is Vicious," she remarked, the tip of a fingernail touching the tip of his aquiline nose. Even in profile, he appeared younger and vulnerable, not quite like the man she knew. She backed away from the picture until the backs of her knees hit the arm of one of the captain chairs. Gracefully, she sat down, her eyes still on the picture. "I would never have thought he would go to Titan." 

"Another one of those 'he doesn't seem the type' moments?" Gren asked with a short chuckle. 

Reluctantly, she pulled her attention away from the photo. "Yeah," she admitted and picked up her glass. "Something like that." She took a long sip and then asked, "What was he like during the war?" 

"Quiet," Gren said, his tone wistful, almost loving. "He saved me so many times. If it wasn't scorpions, it was enemy fire. He was an incredible shot with a great instinct." 

"Yes, he was exceptional," she agreed. "Although he preferred the katana to a gun. He felt it was a more personal way to kill." Her pronouncement sounded like an indictment but it wasn't meant to be. She half expected Gren to ask for further explanation but he didn't and they fell into a short silence that lasted until she asked, "So how did you come across that song you played tonight?" 

"Wait here," he said. He got up and left the room. When he returned, he had a small item in his hand that appeared to a part from a music box. He twisted the handle and it began to play. 

Julia's hand shot out to stop the music. "Take this out of here," she told him, her voice stern. Confused, he took the item from her hand and removed it from the room. When he returned, she asked him, "Vicious gave that to you?" He nodded. "When I leave this place, not today or tomorrow, but when I leave Callisto, open it and then break what is inside but don't play it again." 

He frowned. "Why?" 

"You'll know when you open it." She took a sip of her drink. "You said that Vicious was your betrayer as well as your savior. What happened?" She knew her questioning bordered on cool, but it couldn't be helped. She had to be on alert. 

Yet, Gren would not be so accommodating. "You said he was your lover and your torturer," he volleyed back. "What happened?" 

She leaned back against the cushions, took out a cigarette and lit up. Crossing her long legs in a feline smooth move, she answered, "It was the usual boy meets girl, syndicate style." 

He grinned at her discomfort. "I'm just a backward countryboy, Julia. I need you to be more detailed than that. It isn't like I'm going to share this with anyone." 

"How do I know for sure?" 

He sighed and confessed, "Julia, do you think I'm on Callisto for the wonderful winter scenery? I'm an escaped prisoner of war. I was convicted of espionage. Where can I go? Who would I tell?" 

Biting her lower lip and uncrossing and recrossing her legs, she gave his words consideration. "Why do you need to know?" It was a dumb question. She knew that. He needed to know because she needed to tell him. He didn't give her an answer and after another gulp of watered down vodka, she began to tell him her story. 

"I was the good girl, high school prom queen on her way to college who wanted to be a tough girl, detention bitch on her way to _real life_," she told him with a hint of dark humor. "Of course, _real life_ meant the street life. Nothing soft and delicate for me." She smirked at her stupid naivete. "After I graduated from high school, I didn't make it to University as planned. Instead, I began to hang out with this guy who had a brother in the Red Dragons. My dad figured it was a phase. When he wasn't yelling at me, he was joking with me in that nervous _this-can't-be-happening-to-my-kid_ kind of way about how I couldn't be in the syndicate because I sucked at shooting a gun. What he didn't figure on was that my real talent is driving. No one can drive a getaway car like me," she shared without conceit. "That's how I got in. As my shooting skills got better and the jobs grew more frequent, my parents pushed me away and finally disowned me." Her face constricted momentarily. "Can't say I blame them. I got what I wanted and not what I wanted." 

"That's usually the way it goes," he commiserated. 

She gave him a pained smile and resumed. "After a year, I was moved to Vicious's team." Her voice faltered and stumbled as the image of the young Vicious appeared in her mind. He'd worn a tan three piece suit that impeccably fit his slim body. He was not handsome, but his angular features were fascinating. For the first three months, he had barely spoken to her. Acknowledgment from Vicious consisted of a sideways glance and glimmer in his pale eyes and little else. 

"He drove me crazy," Julia recalled. "He was so different from everyone else who all seemed to fall in line. He did his job and did it well but he always kept himself apart from the others and relinquished none of what made him different." 

"That's what drove you crazy?" he asked in faint disbelief. 

She grinned and conceded, "Yeah, that and he was dangerously sexy." 

"I was waiting for that," Gren riposted with a sly wink. 

She raised her glass in mock salute. "A devil in silver hair and custom made suits and rare smiles." Her feelings were one-sided for a long time. "It took me the better part of year to get him to really notice me, but when he did..." Her voice trailed off. 

"When he did...?" Gren prompted. 

She laughed without humor. "Another example of getting everything I wanted and nothing that I wanted." 

He'd been everything she wanted in a lover. Private, tender and yet rough and passionate. He confided in her and yet committed nothing to her. And in between them was the Red Dragon and an unspoken vow that he never voiced but she knew existed all the same. 

As his workload expanded and grew more dangerous, she could sense that his soul was slowly being ground to dust. His eyes grew weary and shadowed. His lips thinned and the already rare smiles became even rarer. His hands hardened with callouses. His body became a billboard of scars. He found solace in a new drug to keep him awake, to help him see. He didn't use it nearly as much as others but he used it enough to cause her concern. 

Yet she had remained silent. In spite of everything, he remained her passionate contradiction in the privacy of their apartment. He was strong and gentle. He gave her pain and pleasure. To her eternal shame, she could not let go of those memories nor let go of the admission that she had enjoyed every moment with him, especially those moments when it had seemed her love had brought him some measure of peace. 

But if he had worries, he did not share them. If she had worries, she did not share them. That was not their way and it had been okay with her. She could live with it and their life. 

Then along came Spike. 

Her lips twisted and her eyes rolled. "I remember when I first met Spike. Vicious was dressed in this gorgeous three piece suit and I was in a sleek shiny catsuit. We were planning to go out for dinner, but Vicious wanted to introduce me to a friend so we hung out in this pool hall. That he called Spike a friend said everything about what Spike meant to him because Vicious didn't really have friends. I really should have known better," she said more to herself than to her companion. "When Spike came in, I thought he was some guy who had gotten lost. He was in a beat up baseball jacket, a sweater than even a high school kid wouldn't be caught dead wearing, jeans that were a bit too tight and a bit too dirty, and the ugliest shoes on the face of Mars. I don't think he had bothered to comb his hair and I'm still not sure if he had bothered to brush his teeth. He had stared at me a little too long and just when I was about to tell him that he was in the wrong place, Vicious went up to him and put his arm around him. I couldn't believe it that they were friends. It just couldn't be." 

"You fell in love with him." There was the hint of an accusation in Gren's words. 

She shook her head and then nodded and then shook her head again. "Not at first," she defended with genuine honesty. "At first, I was jealous. Jealous of the way Vicious was with him. Relaxed, open, natural. After awhile, I stopped being jealous because I liked the effect it had on Vicious and we became friends. That's all I wanted to be. In the beginning, that's all I had meant to be." She twirled the lit cigarette in her hand and watched as it made a spiral trail of smoke. "I should have known I was in trouble. Spike is a hard man for a woman to resist even when he isn't in pursuit of her. Or maybe especially when he's not in pursuit," she told him with a bleak laugh. The hand that held the cigarette shook a little. "He'd been in the Red Dragons as long as Vicious. He could be as hard as Vicious and yet he could be so damn funny. There was something about him. I can't really explain it." 

She leaned forward and stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. "Spike was special. Vicious knew it and as I got to know him, so did I. You see, he has this way of looking at you that makes a cautious heart take chances and if you look into his eyes long enough, they can make you forget yourself or rather, they can make you dream dreams that you'd forgotten you had." She leaned her elbows on her thighs. "Vicious and I slept together but he was gone more than he was with me. Spike and I just kept growing closer. Then there was a bad shootout and Spike came to me and I took care of him." Julia's eyes closed and she curved a hand around the back of her neck. "I don't need to tell you the rest." 

"You betrayed him?" 

She flinched and nodded. _You can only betray the ones you love_, she thought miserably. "Spike wanted to get out of the business and take me with him. Vicious didn't want either one of us to go. He could live with our relationship but not with our leaving him. But Spike had his mind made up. I couldn't change his and I couldn't change Vicious's. I couldn't change anything. The chance at change I was give was a choice: Kill Spike and be set free or leave with him and both of us would be killed. So I made up my own option and ran out on both of them." 

Gren studied her with those arresting blue eyes and she wondered what he could see in her expression. Would he see her regret? Her anger? Her desperation? Her confusion? Her damnably flaky sense of love? 

"Would he have killed you?" he finally asked after a long silence. 

The memory of a gun pressed to her temple rose up and stiffened the bones of her spine. "Yes, he would have," she said with conviction. "I took Spike away." 

And that had been the hardest truth for her to face. Vicious had trusted Spike like no other. In his own silent way, he had loved Spike like a comrade, like a brother, and she had been the one to cause Spike to turn away from him. He could bear her loss but he could not bear the loss of Spike. She polished off the rest of her drink and announced with phony bravado, "And that is my story. What's yours?" 

Gren leaned back against the cushions and stretched an arm out along the top of the sofa. He swirled his drink in the glass as he contemplated his words. "I went to Titan because I needed money. I fought the war because it was there." He laughed harshly. "If you ask me what that war was about, I couldn't tell you. I could only tell you that my comrades and I fought to stay alive and stay together. And in the middle of it all, I met Vicious. I was too old for hero worship but it didn't matter. I worshipped him. His coolness under fire. The quiet leadership. The way he seemed to know exactly what to do. I would have done anything for him." 

Julia wondered how much "anything" encompassed but kept her suspicions to herself. "And then..." 

"The short story is that I was arrested as a spy and thrown in prison. I was told that it was Vicious who provided the evidence that helped them put me away. I couldn't believe it," he whispered unsure. "I still don't want to believe it. Anyway, between the thoughts of betrayal and thoughts of being locked up forever, I started to go nuts. To help me, they began to give me these pills." 

"Did they help?" 

He choked back a laugh. "Oh, yeah, they helped all right." The disgust was evident in his tone. Julia wasn't sure what to say so she kept silent as the light that sparked his eyes dimmed and she waited for him to continue. His grin twisted as he told her, "By now, you must know that I swing both ways." 

She smiled cautiously. "I suspected it but I wasn't sure." 

His mouth thinned. "I also have the appearance of being both ways." 

The words seemed redundant and she frowned in confusion. "I don't understand." 

The arm that rested along the top of the sofa retracted and the hand touched his breast. "Underneath this shirt, I wear bindings to keep me flat." 

It took a number of seconds before Julia figured out what he meant. "What happened?" 

"The medication they gave me messed up my hormones--" he patted his chest and she heard the brush of material upon material as he did so "--and I ended up with fine pair of breasts that most females would envy. Men usually do too but not quite when they have to wear them," he half-joked. "As a comfort, I tell myself that I may have been one of the lucky ones. Prisoners from the Titan war were guinea pigs. When I'd heard rumors of experiments that were far worse than turning prisoners into trannies, I decided it was time for me to get out. I didn't care how depressed or messed up I was. I had to get out." 

"How did you escape?" 

He gave her a sly smile. "Didn't I tell you that swing both ways? Such an attribute can come in handy. There was a guard and his wife who wanted me for a pet so they snuck me out the old fashioned way. They disguised me as a girl. Ironic, isn't it?" he remarked with light sarcasm. "After they got me out, I regret that I did not show very good manner by sticking around. Instead, I ran and ran until I ended up here. And in this barren wasteland, I still think of Titan and Vicious and I'm haunted by the questions of what really happened." 

"Sometimes not knowing is the best course of action." 

"Maybe," he conceded faintly. "I wish I could forget but--" he looked down at his glass "--it is rather difficult." 

When he raised his eyes back to hers, Julia could see a loneliness in his expression that was not unlike her own and felt a kinship that was different from one she had shared with Spike or Vicious and yet the same. She got up from her chair and moved to sit next to him. Under the crook of his arm, she began, "I can't tell you if Vicious betrayed you. He's not above betrayal. In truth, he expects it. But what you described isn't really his style. If he wanted you out of the way, his normal form of silence is killing the person and he is very good at that." She took one of his hands in hers. "Whatever happened to you, he had his reasons for doing it. Vicious always has a reason." 

"Are you defending him?" he asked, tipping his head back in curiosity. 

A wry smile tilted a corner of her mouth. "It is a bad habit," she admitted with not so mocking despair. 

He pushed the strands of golden hair from her eyes. "You loved him." She didn't answer him. What was she supposed to say? Did she need to say anything? "You still love him," he amended in place of her non-answer. 

Her heart beat heavily in her chest as she confessed in a whisper, "I will always love Vicious but he doesn't love me. He never did." 

Gren's expression told her that he didn't believe her but he was gentleman enough to refrain from disagreement. Instead, he asked, "And that other guy?" 

Julia felt her heart soften and the tears she kept at bay began to sting the inner corners of her eyes. "I don't want to love Spike. I never wanted to love Spike." 

"But you do." 

"But I do." Her fingers smoothed the silky fabric of his shirt and she said the words that she had never allowed herself to say. "I love Spike Spiegel." 

"And that's bad?" 

"It is the worst."

* * *

The woman who was a dream that drifted in one night to take refuge from the dreary cold left as quietly as she came. 

Like a ghost with nothing, she'd found a ritual to give her warmth as she sat in the same spot in the same club and drink the same drink. Her clothes never changed. Dark brown pants and sweater with a heavy overcoat, but her smile, small and sad, grew a little wider and a little less sad, and her voice, low and soft, gave in to warm laughter now and again. 

They had wished that such gifts would be shared with them and sometimes she relented, but she mostly reserved her smiles and laughter for the saxophone player and they had begun to believe that maybe she would stay if only for him. 

Then one evening, the saxophone player stood alone on the stage and played the haunting song that he called _Julia_ and they knew that she would never return. 

For a long time after, her absence was keenly felt because as the saxophone player had told them that night after he had finished playing the song that would become his signature, "She was like the sun visiting to keep away the black days and now that she is gone, we are back to doing time."

* * *

**Author's Note:** A sad character fic, I know, but it's been a long time since I wrote for Bebop and it is great to visit this show and its fabulous characters once more. Over the weekend, I was watching Jupiter Jazz and later when I was listening to Soundgarden's _Fell on Black Days_, I became inspired by the idea of a scene between Julia and Gren talking about Vicious. In the past, I would not have described myself as a Julia fan, but as I watch the series now, I find myself more sympathetic to her. My original fascination for Vicious continues to grow and in this piece, I had an opportunity to write about what Julia might have felt about Vicious along with her feelings for Spike and the confusion that it caused her. I hope that I did all of them some justice. 

Like any piece of fanfiction, this vignette should be considered AU. Only the show is true CB canon, but I did try to stick closely to the show's intent as much as perceived possible but I apologize for any errors or mistakes in details. However, I admit to taking some deliberate liberties. The most obvious being Vicious's name. His name is not Vikesha Sariel in the series. We're not given his name so I had made it up for an old story I had written. I still like the name so I used it again. 

But anyhow, thank you for taking the time to read this story and as always to new and old fans, "See you Space Cowboys"! 

Respectfully Puaena 


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